


Cross Your Heart

by eloquated



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Tissue Warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-10-19 13:50:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17602544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eloquated/pseuds/eloquated
Summary: Sherlock was five when he decided that he would never be locked out again.His brother needed him.  They needed each other.(Things are never as simple as they seem).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anarfea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anarfea/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedicated to Anarfea, who mentioned that they wanted a story that ended... This way.
> 
> (Because putting spoilers in the opening notes is just a bad idea!)

When Mycroft was eleven, he contracted the measles.  The virus crawled in and stretched out along his immune system, corrupting as it went.

For days, he hovered at the burning, feverish edge of consciousness; and listened through the throbbing in his skull to the sounds of his little brother crying outside the door.  Sherlock hadn’t understood _infection, contagion_.  He had only known that he was afraid and the person with the answers was being locked behind his bedroom door.

Kept apart from him.

Sherlock was five when he promised himself that he would never be kept out again.

His brother needed him.  And nobody would ever be allowed to close the doors between them.

(It all seemed so simple at the time.)

 

***

 

When Mycroft was twenty, an assignment went terribly wrong.  Three people died on that humid Columbian night, and two more in the hospital after.

Mycroft was never quite sure why he’d been ‘spared’.

It seemed a strange sort of word, he mused after each surgery-- he had _lived_.  

Survived the flight back to London.  

And for six endless weeks, trapped in the hospital, his brother had sat by his side and kept him company.

Some things left wounds that couldn’t be healed.  

Those were the things you learned to live with.  That you tried to accept, because you couldn’t change them.

Take your pills.  Rest.

(But his brother was there, and Mycroft felt stronger when he was close.  It was a setback, not the end of his life).

 

***

 

A year later he was admitted.

Sherlock read every book and article he could find on heart surgery.  His mother thought it would only frighten him more, but he wanted to understand.

There were doors between them again.  Tall, swinging ones, covered in signs that read “Authorized Personnel Only” in bold, ugly letters.

And when the surgeon came to speak to them, there was blood on his white coat.

At twenty-one, Mycroft was removed from active field work.

In the aftermath, Sherlock curled onto the side of his hospital bed and traced the beetle black stitches laddered down his brother’s chest.  

He kissed the tips of his fingers, and the fluttering pulse in his throat.  It wasn’t enough, but he needed his rest.

The textbooks had spoken of infection. And so Sherlock rested his head on his brother’s shoulder instead, and listened to the artificially regular cadence of his breath.

That heart was his, and it always had been.  

(Mycroft would understand when he woke.  They were meant to be like this.)

 

***

 

When Sherlock was eighteen, he overdosed.

Went to rehab.  Escaped.

Overdosed.

Rehab.

Talked his way out.

Overdosed.  

He despised the hospitals with their institutional cheer, and the scent of human waste and sour bile beneath the disinfectant.  

The only time he didn’t feel fragile -- on the verge of shattering into a million faceted shards, sharp and brittle enough to cut -- was when his brother came to see him.  

Mycroft would hold his hand and anchor him, smelling of grapefruit and cedar, and he would walk with Sherlock around the grounds and force him to breathe fresh air.

When he left, Sherlock would devil the doctors and torment the nurses.  Eventually they decided he didn’t want to recover. They couldn’t help him if he wasn’t willing to try.

It wasn’t the pain that he despised-- but what could goldfish understand of that?

It was the night Mycroft took him home.  To his own house, clean and warm.

Withdrawal was unspeakably ugly.

But while his body despised him, Sherlock buried his face in his brother’s lap and let himself be soothed.  

(It was hateful, but eventually it got easier.)

 

***

 

When Sherlock was thirty-three, he died.

(They were the longest two years of Mycroft’s life.)

 

***

 

Sherrinford was a strange place.  The walls resonated with the memory of screams, and the floor reverberated the dull click of their steps back at them.  

Mycroft didn’t want to die, but the stuttering heart in his chest had other ideas.  

Too much adrenaline.  Too much strain.

Each beat ticking over and burning behind his ribs.  The weight of his life bearing down, and there was nothing either of them could do about that.

Eurus had known.  And she had planned it well.

“I can’t lose you.  Not like this.” Sherlock’s voice cracked, raw, as he picked the tiny fragments of splintered coffin from his palms.  He didn’t want to believe what his own deductions were telling him.

“I don’t believe we’re going to have much choice.”  Was the quiet reply. It was easier to be brave for Sherlock.  Mycroft had been doing it all his life.

Take your pills.  Avoid the legwork.  Stay calm.

_If you don’t…_

“Forgive me?”

“Of course.”

(Mycroft had hoped to die an old man, comfortable in his bed.)

 

***

 

Nothing had ever looked so cold as the barrel of the gun.

Or as bright as the spark of brilliant red muzzle flash.

Eurus’ voice, triumphant, crackled with static that rang in Mycroft’s ears.  But it was fading, along with the horrified breaking sound of John’s.

There was only Sherlock, and the gun falling from his limp fingers.  Clattering on the ground. His blue eyes watching with muted devastation as the bloom of bright, living red seeped through Mycroft’s waistcoat.

It didn’t hurt as much as he had feared.  Mostly it was cold, with a chill that swept up from his tingling fingers and toes and _oh…_

There was only a moment, and it reached his heart.

(Not much of a target, but it had been enough.)

 

***

 

It was dark, and Sherlock had survived.  

“Lestrade, my brother--”  He wanted to tell him to make sure he was treated properly.  That Mycroft wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see the human shell, with all its mortal failings, that had been left behind.

A little respect for the dead.

Let him keep his dignity.

There would be questions in the days to come, and Sherlock didn’t know how he would answer any of them.  Where could he even start?

And this time, he didn’t refuse the orange shock blanket that someone draped around his shoulders.

There was a powder burn on his hand.  In the back of the ambulance, he scrubbed at it with his thumb, but it refused to come clean.

Maybe Mycroft would have survived.  

(He didn’t so.)

But he’d pulled the trigger, and now he would never know.

(So this was how it ended.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 🖤


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally I wasn't intending to write a second chapter to this, but some of the comments really got me to thinking. And thinking. Aaand thinking! It was very quickly obvious that I was going to have to write what happened.
> 
> Just a warning, that if you're upset by drug use or mental health facilities, this is a good time to hit the back button.
> 
> (Partially inspired by the music, and the ambiance, of this music video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KuFMhl5uG8)

Sherlock had been waiting forever for Mycroft to make his next move.  

The chess board had been set up and waiting, the pieces scattered across the checkered tiles in dark, matte black and glossy bone white.  And when Sherlock blinked, slow and deliberate, he could sometimes see the faint film of dust on the edges.

His brother had always been slow.  

Methodical.

He’d always been the one to place his pieces with care.  But he had never taken this long. 

So long that Sherlock had almost forgotten.

Had forgotten.

How long it had been.

(The clock on the wall had stopped ticking, but Sherlock didn’t want to change the batteries.)

 

***

 

Something was wrong.  He knew that.

It was wrong when the rubber band pinched and constricted, his veins rising to the surface like a map picked out in blues and purples.

It was wrong when the cocaine hit his blood with a chemical burn. 

He closed his eyes against his brother’s disapproving expression.  The cocaine helped him think.

Or it helped banish the memory of...

Mycroft didn’t need to drown.  He was strong like that.

Besides, Sherlock was still waiting for him to move his bloody chess piece.  

Mycroft could look as disapproving as he wanted.  Not everyone could be brave like him.

(If Mycroft really wanted him to stop, why didn’t he reach out and do it himself?)

 

***

 

There was somebody yelling, and it wasn’t Mycroft.  

It was loud and discordant, and it reminded Sherlock a little of over-tightened strings.  The protesting shriek of his bow across his violin. It wasn’t a nice sound, and he couldn’t make out the words.

They should stop.  Couldn’t they see he was playing chess?

Trying to play.

“Mycroft, make them  _ shut up _ ... And move your damn piece.”

Red and blue lights gleamed through the tall, thin windows and reflected on the far wall.  They pooled in the yellow syringe in his hand. And Sherlock wondered if the colour would run through his blood, too.

He could be lovely on the inside.  

Brightening the hollow space where something had been scooped out of him.  It could fill him up until the colours ran from his body, warm and incandescent.

(He didn’t hear the paramedic’s boots on the stairs.  And he didn’t feel Greg’s fists on his chest, demanding with each percussive thud that he stay alive.)

 

***

 

It wasn’t polite to whisper, but the people in this place where too stupid to know that.

They’d been too stupid the last time, too.  

“Make them  _ stop _ .  I’m fine.  I don’t need…  Any of this.” He protested to his brother, sitting quiet and still at his bedside.  That was where Mycroft always sat when he was here.

And Sherlock would lapse quiet when his Mycroft…  _ his his his Mycroft, stupid goldfish didn’t see anything _ … would comb his hands through his hair. 

He would curl his fingers under the straps; the hateful, padded, too too tight things on his baby brother’s wrist, to take the pressure away.  Make them stop hurting.

Sherlock wanted to claw at his skin until the itching stopped.

But Mycroft wouldn’t unfasten him, even when he begged.

His chest hurt.  And he didn’t know why.

Mycroft wouldn’t tell him.  And he didn’t want to talk to anyone else.

(Molly knew he wasn’t seeing her.  But at least he wasn’t alone.)

 

***

 

The next time he woke, the water was either much too hot, or too damn cold.  It made his skin prickle with goosebumps. There was no Mycroft, no hint of bespoke linen in the grey-tiled Hell. 

Naked and shaking violently, he didn’t even care about the idiots in their white lab coats watching him.  Medically sanctioned fucking voyeurism. Their eyes moving over his body and searching.

Searching.

For what?  They wouldn’t tell him.

And when he asked for his brother, they said he was gone. 

Didn’t he remember?

It showed how little they knew.  Even if Mycroft was angry (had they argued?  Sherlock didn’t think so. But maybe he’d forgotten already.) he wouldn’t abandon him here.

He hadn’t before.

He wouldn’t start now.

Mycroft knew they were supposed to be together.  It was the way they were created. Stitched from the same…

The same…

(Sometimes, Greg wondered if it would have been kinder to let him die.  Molly only wished she could disagree.)

 

***

 

“Tell him I’m sorry!  He can come back now! Please…  Tell him I’m sorry… He can’t leave me here.  He can’t fucking leave me!”

(The doctors promised he couldn’t hurt himself.  That wasn’t good enough for Siger. Sherlock was the only child he had left.)

 

***

 

Something was wrong.  The doctor’s knew, Sherlock was sure of it.

But they wouldn’t tell him.

And Mycroft have been gone too long.  

When they opened his window, he could smell the summer outside, but that was wrong, too.  

It wasn’t even Christmas yet.  He should know. 

They’d had plans.

And his brother wouldn’t forget them.

(Every time she turned the page on the calendar, Mrs. Hudson grew a little more convinced that she would never get him back.)

 

***

 

Anderson came on the weekends.  

They played checkers.

Never chess.

Sherlock was still waiting to finish one game.

He never thought he’d be grateful for Anderson’s company.

(It wasn’t pity. Philip Anderson knew what it was like when people thought you were crazy.)

 

***

 

Something was wrong.

And it had been wrong for a long time.  

Some reason Mycroft was staying away.

But Sherlock couldn’t remember what it was.

(Sometimes they considered telling him.  Could it really be worse than this?)

 

***

 

When Christmas finally came, Sherlock deduced the doctors and the nurses.  He watched the window, and the frost climbing up the glass in feathering white, and he waited.

His brother was coming to get him, he was sure.  

He was just a little late.  Mycroft could be allowed to be a little late, just this once.

He wouldn’t forget.

His parents came.

Greg and Molly came.  

John brought pictures of a toddler that Sherlock didn’t remember.  He looked so sad when Sherlock asked for pictures of Rosie, instead.

She was his goddaughter, he wanted to know she was alright.

Even if John couldn’t bring her to see him.

(They were all thinking “It’s been a year.”  But none of them wanted to say it.)

 

***

 

There was something wrong, and Sherlock was becoming aware that it was buried in his head.

It was somewhere under his skin.  

It was corrupt, and slithering.

When he tried to scratch it out, the orderlies came.

They were strong.

And everything went black.

(It would be best, everyone decided, to change his dosage.)

 

***

 

There was something wrong, and Sherlock couldn’t find it.

It was so hard to think.

(But he was trying).

 

***

 

There was something wrong, and Sherlock could feel it behind his ribs.  Seeping outwards, under his skin.

There was stain on his hand.

Black.

It wouldn't wash away.

(Most of the time he just stared out the window now.  Waiting.)

 

***

 

There was something wrong.

And Sherlock knew it was him.

(So this was how it ended for him.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 🖤


End file.
